See, I have set before you this day life and prosperity, death and adversity…
Choose life.
Choose life: isn’t that what we all try to do?
- We fasten our seat belts and look both ways before crossing streets – and teach our children to do the same.
- We pay attention to our nutrition and take our vitamins;
- We save money for a rainy day – or indulge in those “life-giving purchases” without which we cannot imagine living: a big screen t.v. or new bedroom furniture – or books!…
- We go to the gym – or at least talk about trying to get enough exercise;
- We seek ways to relieve stress: yoga or meditation or massage;
- We take vacations or go on retreat.
- We connect with support groups or therapists or spiritual directors.
- We look for “balance” in our lives to ameliorate the effects of multi-taxing…
The “all time high” sales of self-help books certainly reflects our current culture’s preoccupation with seeking life.
It also reflects how easily we, in our secular culture, many deracinated from our religious roots, have slipped into the position of making ourselves the center of that “life equation”: choosing life has become “all about me” – my needs, my desires, my life – and the ever-increasing rings of “self care” we draw around ourselves only serve to protect an empty core.
Religion has often been central in establishing just what it means to “seek life” – and how – that has often resulted in its own set of rings, resulting in layer upon layer of strictures:
- No meat on Fridays.
- No dancing or card playing.
- Dietary restrictions.
And so on. I have a friend who hired to teach at an evangelical college in the area, and before they could complete the paperwork for her employment was asked to sign a FOURTEEN page statement of belief, filled with things to which she had to agree or disagree, to think, say, or do.
Many of us were raised with some of those caveats, mandates of what we must do and must not do which ironically often took on lives of their own and became gods in their own right – and, I venture to say, they, too, protected what was often an equally empty core.
(I can remember my mother’s comment that as an adolescent religion had so many prohibitions that it seemed to diminish life, and it was only later, as an adult, that she found it could enrich one’s life, one’s relationship with God! A tragedy, which I’m sure would distress God as much as it does us. God WANTS our relationship with God to enrich our life; God wants our life to in God to be abundant! )
There is an Old Talmudic belief – you can build a fence around an impulse. If that’s not good enough, you build a fence around the fence.
Jesus bumped up against lots of fences…
- His disciples plucked grain and ate on the Sabbath.
- They worried less about what went into their mouths than what came out.
- He healed on the Sabbath.
- He spoke with women, and dined with all manner of folk one wouldn’t normally have at one’s table…
Jesus shows us what it is to “choose life.”
He replaces those fences, fence-upon-fence-upon fence with one thing: love.
We don’t need fences, he is saying; we need a plumb line.
- We need a way of taking actions and making decisions that reflect care and compassion not only for ourselves, but for our impact on others.
- We need to measure what we do against God’s overarching desire for justice.
- We need to act out of a place of love deep within us that can connect us both to God and to our neighbor.
We need to ask ourselves: does this action enhance life – or diminish it?
When Jesus prohibits divorce, it’s not an abstract principle he’s invoking. It’s an example of this teaching within the particularities of his time and culture.
His was a society where women were property, and marriage was a business contract negotiated between two men: the father of the bride, and the prospective bridegroom. A man could divorce at will – just ask for that certificate! – and a women without a man was among the most vulnerable in society, reduced to begging or prostitution for her livelihood.
Not to divorce is living out of a core that “chooses life” – that assumes responsibility and care for others.
The result of living according to the ever-increasing series of commandments, decrees, and ordinances in order to lead blameless lives, often makes our lives smaller and more constricted. Thus, rather than leading lives reflective of God’s abundance, our lives become diminished, bearing witness to a poverty of spirit…
A few months ago The New Yorker had a cartoon showing Moses speaking to the Israelites in the wilderness. He had obviously just descended from the mountain, and was holding aloft the two tablets of the Ten Commandments. One of the crowd, raising his hand, asks, “What’s the takeaway on all this?”
What’s the takeaway on all this?
This morning Jesus tells us.
The “take-away” Jesus says, is to “choose life” – to act in such a way that we enhance not only our own lives, but those of our neighbor; and that we love God.
In another part of the Gospel – which we hear every Sunday morning – he gives us the “take-away” like this: that we are to “love God with our heart and our soul and our mind; and to love our neighbor as ourselves.”
Cultures change with time and geography.
Shell fish, once an anathema and still found in scripture as “forbidden,” is routinely a part of our lives. Unless we are allergic, we don’t even think about eating shrimp.
We are equally able to read scripture selectively (and contextually) around the issue of slavery.
Other issues, however, such as sexuality, have not faded as quietly into the culture, and there are those who continue to try to erect fences around the particularities of life today, resulting in page after page of what we must say and do and believe.
And Jesus offers us a new way to “choose life”:
Does what we say or do reflect love and compassion?
I ask myself how choosing life as Jesus defines it might shape our response to the issues both personally, and as a society. How might Jesus’ plumb line shape our response to issues like immigration or health care? Might they change the content of those discussions – or at least shape for form of them? Or personally – how might that plumb line shape relationships with co-workers? Neighbors? Or even impact that “road rage” we so frequently experience?
Choose life!
A plumb line made up of justice, love, and compassion is both more simple and more difficult than the fences upon fences of commandments, ordinances, and decrees.
It allows the message of Jesus to be timeless.
It also demands we pay attention to our own formation, not simply bumping against prohibitions, but living in such a way that we choose life – not only for ourselves, but for others.
St. Augustine, difficult as he may be sometimes, has said: “Our whole business…in this life, is to restore to health the eye of the heart whereby God may be seen.”
Our whole business…in this life, is to restore to health the eye of the heart whereby God may be seen…
The “eye of the heart” sounds like Jesus’ plumb line to me!
The Sufi poet Hafiz speaks of humankind as “holes in a flute that Christ’s breath moves through” and asks us to listen to this music.
There is something about that breath that is life-giving.
Can Christ’s breath be heard through us?
Can we “choose life”?
Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment